What’s Your Business?

We put you, the client, at the centre of all that we do.

Large corporate clients have always been the backbone of the firm's client base.

We are known for our expertise and long experience in handling major patent and trade mark filing programmes, sometimes covering every significant market worldwide, for some of the largest commercial organisations in the world. We also have the resources, expertise and systems required to cope with huge numbers of cases for the same client, often encompassing a wide variety of technology specialisms. We advise on all aspects of filing strategy.

We frequently represent corporate clients from all technology areas in oppositions and appeals before the European Patent Office.

We appreciate that your needs, as a corporate client, are different from those of a smaller client. You may need us to build extra time into our processes to accommodate a requirement to consult widely within your organisation. You may need us to communicate with multiple parties and to present our communications in a particular way to suit your systems and procedures.

Our approach is to be as flexible as possible in meeting your needs, whether you instruct us directly or via an overseas attorney firm.

We advise companies on intellectual property issues from early innovation stages through growth, expansion and in many cases acquisition, frequently dealing directly with the CEO or Technical Director. Many startup and spinout companies rely totally on our intellectual property advice because they do not have any in-house experts. Often they come to us in the first place on the recommendation of a university or as a result of our involvement with their technology transfer arm.

If you have not had much exposure to intellectual property matters, you may find them daunting at first. We will help you to understand the often complex legal and strategic issues.

At a first meeting we will typically discuss your innovation and its market potential, your company’s business plan and the role of intellectual property protection. This may lead to the drafting and filing of a patent or trade mark application.

The application process may involve a patent search or a trade mark search. We will analyse the search results and advise you on the likelihood of patent filings or trade mark filings succeeding in different countries of the world, as each patent or trade mark office applies its own rules. We can help you to progress your application to the point at which your patent or trade mark is granted. We can then help you with subsequent applications to achieve wider geographical coverage, and advise you more generally on patent portfolio management or trade mark portfolio management.

As your company grows, you may make further innovations. We can audit your intellectual property to ensure that appropriate steps are taken to secure any additional protection required. We can help with patent litigation or trade mark litigation if required to enforce your rights, and deal with registrable transactions for the licensing or assignment of rights. Our work with global corporate clients gives us an understanding of what they are looking for when considering a licence agreement or partnership with an SME, or an investment or acquisition. The protection in place for the SME’s intellectual property is likely to be a crucial factor.

At every stage of our relationship with you, we will pay close attention to costs and help you to maximise the potential of your intellectual property assets within the financial constraints of your business.

To access useful information for SMEs, including schemes, grants and subsidies supported by the UK Government, click here.

J A Kemp Working With SMEs

Click here to see some brief case studies that illustrate how we have helped a wide variety of clients in the SME sector to protect and exploit their intellectual property assets.

We have the knowledge and experience to work effectively with you at all stages in the technology transfer process.

We are comfortable dealing with inventions based on creative, academic science that crosses technical boundaries, and we can always provide a team of specialists with the required combination of disciplines. Our attorneys, many of whom have PhDs, will quickly earn the trust and respect of your academic inventors. They understand the need to balance commercial goals with academic pressures.

The dissemination of knowledge is the lifeblood of university research, yet the patent system imposes a need for secrecy. We are highly experienced in advising technology transfer clients on strategies to deal with this conflict. We can also assist with the complex ownership issues that sometimes arise when inventions originate in an academic environment.

We handle large volumes of work for two of the four leading university-based technology transfer operations in the UK. Our client base also includes several smaller technology transfer organisations, and we work directly for leading universities overseas on cases at the cutting edge of science, across many different fields of technology.

Our attorneys work closely with academics from the earliest point in the commercialisation process, right through to the point where a spinout business is launched or the technology is licensed or otherwise brought to market. We use patent, trade mark or design protection as appropriate to safeguard our clients’ intellectual property assets throughout the process.

We work with inventors and universities that are licensing their technology, partnering with a commercial organisation, collaborating with another academic institution or otherwise engaged with a third party. We can assist with due diligence or registrable transactions if required.

We appreciate that your technology transfer budget may need to be spread across many promising prospects. We will help you to make the most of your resources by providing clarity on the patentability of your inventions and ensuring that you are well informed about procedural costs.

We value very highly indeed our relationships with attorney firms throughout the world.

Some of you are firms that we have worked with for decades, handling major caseloads on behalf of your clients across diverse technology areas. Some of you are new to us, either because we have recently become acquainted or because you have recently instructed us on behalf of a client.

Our partners regularly travel overseas and aim to visit overseas attorney firms when they can. We appreciate the importance of personal relationships, not just between firms but also between individual attorneys.

We will enthusiastically prosecute any work instructed by you with the same service ethos that we apply to work undertaken directly for an applicant.